Study on the Feasibility of Self-Assembling Peptides as a Three-Dimensional Culture Tool for Drug Screening of Colorectal Adenocarcinoma Cells

In recent years, the incidence of colorectal cancer has been increasing annually. During the research on tumor treatment strategies, the translation of fundamental research findings into clinical applications has often been constrained by the limitations of existing tumor models, with few breakthroughs achieved to date. Therefore, our objective is to explore the feasibility of utilizing self-assembling short peptides (SAPs) to construct a three-dimensional (3D) culture system for colorectal adenocarcinoma cells for anticancer drug screening. By characterizing the physicochemical properties and biocompatibility of SAP SCIOBIO III, we demonstrated that it can rapidly self-assemble into a nanofibrous scaffold under ionic triggers, supporting 3D cell culture. Subsequently, anticancer drug sensitivity tests were conducted on both 2D and 3D culture systems of colorectal adenocarcinoma cells. The results indicate that SCIOBIO III can mimic the extracellular matrix and serves as an ideal scaffold for constructing a 3D cell culture microenvironment. We successfully established a 3D culture model for colorectal adenocarcinoma cells and effectively screened anticancer drugs, which holds promise for advancing the development of personalized anticancer drug screening technologies.